Month: October 2017

One hundred years ago this week, Grace Kingsley paid a visit to the set of an unusual big-budget war film, Legion of Death:

Hup Forward—march! No, it wasn’t any sturdy captain of the Sammies who gave the command, but a slim slip of a woman—Edith Storey, and she was giving her command to still other slim slips of women, a whole drove of them, clad in neat khaki and managing to look like real soldiers instead of chorus girls as one might fear…

Right into a trench Miss Storey marched her feminine cohorts, and then—the battle began. And those girls knew how to use their rifles and bayonets! It was a marvelous sight. They fought like demons with their mock enemies; and pretty soon their pretty caps were all askew, there were actual bloodstains on their faces, and a very real gleam of battle lust in their eyes.

Writer June Mathis (Ben-Hur,Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) based Legion on the first women’s combat battalion in modern history. Kingsley said they were planning “a powerful drama of a Russian woman patriot and the formation of the now famous ‘Battalion’ which undoubtedly saved Russia from German invasion during the revolution that shook the world’s largest empire from end to end and resulted in the overthrow of the Romanoff dynasty.”

Tod Browning

Edith Storey

Kingsley talked to the director, Tod Browning, and just like De Mille and Griffith, he emphasized the lengths they were going to for authenticity in his epic film. An army lieutenant trained the actresses to march and carry arms properly. They weren’t allowed to wear wigs: they had to cut off their hair, just like the soldiers did (these clever ladies made the producers pay their salaries before their hair was shorn). Browning demanded real Russian people as extras for the big street and battle scenes; they were so authentic that they didn’t speak any English so he had to hire seven translators. Danny Hogan, the Chief of Properties, couldn’t find what he needed for a Russian palace in stores, so he borrowed a carload of furniture from the Italian Ambassador. All of this added up to “a feature which promises to be the most timely, unique and spectacular picture which Metro has even produced” according to Kingsley.

Maria Bochkareva

Members of the Battalion of Death

All of their realism didn’t extend to the story, of course. Edith Storey played a princess with a love interest who founds the group, gets captured after a defeat, but is freed to live happily ever after. The real Battalion was proposed by Maria Bochkareva, a decorated front-line fighter who was born to a peasant family. Her goal was to shame Russian male soldiers who were tired of fighting Germans after three years. Minister of War Alexander Kerensky agreed, and allowed Bochkareva to train and lead 300 female recruits as the First Women’s Battalion of Death. They were sent to the front where they were resented by the male soldiers. Even though they performed well in combat, Bochkareva had to disband the unit after a few months because they were treated so badly by their fellow troops. She wrote a memoir in 1919 called Yashka, My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile. She was executed by the Soviet secret police in 1920. You can read more about the Battalion on the History Buff blog.

Batalon (2015)

Kingsley didn’t get to review the finished film, but her co-worker Antony Anderson thought it was “a Metro triumph.” The reason you may have never heard of this epic is because it’s a lost film. A new version of the story, Batalon, was made in Russia in 2015.

Jack Mulhall

The Legion/Battalion was so famous at the time that they got mentioned in a much more lighthearted story Kingsley reported this week. Actor Jack Mulhall was in a downtown L.A. department store trying on a ladies corset for an upcoming role, and he told her:

just as they had me all trussed up in a twin-six, ball bearing, 1917 model steel cage somebody yelled fire…Miserable as I was, I forgot all about the corset and made a dash for the street. Outside I met a friend. “What’s the idea?” he demanded gazing at the corset which I had tried on over my trousers and shirt, “going to war?” Just then along came a girl I knew, and I instantly decided I preferred cremation to meeting her, so back I dashed to the corset department. Yes, I’ve worn ‘em in three scenes now—and, believe me, I don’t know that the Legion of Death was making so much of a sacrifice when it took of its corsets and went to war!

The film was called Madame Spy, and it concerned a young man who goes undercover as a baroness to learn the secrets of a German spy ring. Exhibitor’s Herald thought “Jack Mulhall as an impersonator of the fair sex is quite good,” but the story was padded (February 9, 1918).

Elaine Hammerstein

Kinglsey had a happy surprise while watching her favorite film this week, The Co-respondant: the heroine acts with “straightforward sensibleness uncommon in screen heroines” and the hero “contrary to all screen ethics, behaves like a sensible human being.” The film told the story of a star woman reporter (Elaine Hammerstein*) who, in her youth, was almost dragged into an illicit relationships with a ‘rounder.’ Now the cad’s wife has named her as the co-respondent in her divorce case. Complications, including a libel case, false identity and threats of ruin ensue, but her current love (Wilfred Lucas) believes her side of the story implicitly and fights the cad as soon as he can, while the heroine types it up for an article. Kingsley said:

it is a picture play of such tense and deep-rooted human drama that in the development of its big central situation you sit quite breathless; yet it is played so naturally, there is such an utter lack of forced situation, its train of events is so entirely logical, one seems to be looking on a cross-section of life itself. Maybe you don’t believe this. I don’t blame you if you do not; but just go to the Superba and see for yourself.

You can’t go to the Superba Theater any more, but a fragment of the film exists at the Library of Congress.

Mae Marsh, Sunshine Alley

Kingsley mentioned that J.A. Quinn, the owner of Quinn’s Rialto Theater, announced that the new Mae Marsh film Sunshine Alley would absolutely play for only one week, and he’d add midnight showings on the last days if needed. Curious, I had a look at the Rialto ads to see if he did. They didn’t tell me: I had completely forgotten that in 1917, films ran continuously and the audience came in whenever they wanted to. So I wondered when film ads in the LA Times began to include starting times. Except for some Cinerama shows, it wasn’t until 1962! So if you really want to re-create the film going experience of earlier times, pick a random chapter on your DVDs and start there.

One hundred years ago this week, Grace Kingsley reported that a theater ticket tax was about to go into effect on November 1st and nobody could escape it:

Yea, even though you be a dramatic critic, you will have to pay over your little old ten percent of the price of your ticket. As you do this, you may be thankful you aren’t a theatrical treasurer, who has to “count the house” and the pennies. In fact, it is likely the government may be prevailed upon to provide private asylums for the poor treasurers who will go insane over their tasks.

It really wasn’t that terrible for the treasurers: the ticket sellers had stamps, so when someone bought a ten cent ticket, they also bought a one cent stamp. A fifteen cent ticket required the purchase of a two cent stamp—the government rounded up.* However, five-cent houses were exempt.

Film theaters had another war tax in addition to the 10% ticket tax. It started as a 15-cent per reel per day tax on all films. That proved to be too difficult to collect, so in 1918 it became a five percent tax on film rental fees. There was a side benefit to the tax collection: according to Wid’s Daily (June 14, 1920), this was the first time anyone collected data on how much money film distributors were making in the United States. Between July 1, 1919 and March 31, 1920, taxes on film rentals totaled $347,334.26, so the gross receipts for the industry were $62,520,167.20. They estimated that the total for fiscal year July 1919-June 1920 would be $86,360,222.93. Movies were big business!

With so many stars, it’s no wonder they owned nearly a third of the market.

Wid’s couldn’t find out how much each company contributed to the total because only one distributor made it’s annual report public, but from Famous Players’ report they were able to estimate that they did 32½% of the business in the entire industry.

Unsurprisingly, the theater owners fought the rental tax every step of the way. It ended on January 1, 1922 when it was repealed by the Revenue Act of 1921. The tax on free admissions ended at the same time, so Kingsley had to fish the pennies out from the bottom of her purse for a good long while.

Kingsley’s second favorite film this week was Camille:

The deathless tale of the love of Camille and Armand, with which we all became familiar in our early teens—principally because we were forbidden both book and play—is revived in fine and classic manner by Theda Bara and the Fox company at Miller’s this week. And it matters not how many times you’ve sighed over the sacrifice of Camille and wept at that naughty lady’s deathbed, you’ll do it again for Theda Bara… Miss Bara’s work has improved tremendously since we last saw her. It is characterized by a fine reserve, an artistic restraint, even in the most emotional scenes.

She addressed the first question you would ask about a tuberculosis-ridden character: “One wondered how the undeniably robust-looking actress would manage to look the wasted and ethereal heroine of the story, but she has accomplished it, rather by that subtle spiritual suggestion of a worn-out soul than by any actual physical change.” So acting can do the job instead of some horrific diet. It’s a lost film.

Her favorite film this week was almost unfair competition to the rest: Chaplin’s The Adventurer.

If you want to laugh until the laughs tumble over each other in their eagerness to let yet another laugh escape, be sure and see The Adventurer…His antics are more of the brain and less of the feet than in any previous picture, with the result every little movement has a joyous meaning all its own. ‘And the story starts just as soon as the picture does,’ naively exclaimed a girl sitting behind me. In other words, Charlie pokes his head out of the sand to look right into the barrel of the guard’s gun.

If you want to follow Kingsley’s advice, you can see it on the Internet Archive.

Gladys Brockwell

Kingsley reported on an unusual delivery this week:

Fifty pies, varying in make from custard to pumpkin, in color from the dark red of strawberries to the light yellow of cream, in flavor from coconut to sweet potato; fifty pies have been received by Gladys Brockwell.

A commercial baker from Rosedale, Kansas sent them to her because he’d admired her art so much that he wanted her to try his. Kingsley thought that Mack Sennett might have made better use of them, but she didn’t say what became of the desserts.

Stella Maris

Teddy

The best line this week didn’t come from Kingsley, instead it was from Mary Pickford. She had signed Teddy the Dog, star of several Keystone comedies, for a serious part in her next film (he was to play Stella’s loyal dog in Stella Maris). She said, “I feel sure he’ll be able even to play Hamlet if we want him to. You know, he’s a Great Dane.”

She’ll show herself out.

*”N.P. Theaters Must Bear Share of U.S. War Tax,” Exhibitor’s Herald, October 13, 1917, p.17.

One hundred years ago this week, Grace Kingsley visited the set of the latest Franklin Brothers film, Fan-Fan, an all-kid version of The Mikado. She reported on the “three-ring circus in progress,” and had a chat with the directors about the — the polite word is challenges – of their job:

‘Going over the top’ in the making of “kid” comedies is the accomplishment of the Franklins, and according to these gentlemen, directing in a trench smash hasn’t much on squeezing out the nectar-like juice of genius out of 500 wriggling, restless, contrary kid actors. Nevertheless, it can be done, and the Franklins know all the ways there are to make a naturally fractious small boy or a prissy little miss ‘show off’—which, after all, is all there is to acting.

“The louder I shout, the louder the children shout,” said Sid Franklin the other day, “and the louder they shout the better acting they do.”

For the production they built a Japanese street at the Fox studio and hired Japanese people for the background, but the stars were the Franklins’ regular stock company, Francis Carpenter (Naki-Poo), Virginia Corbin (Yum-Yum) and Violet Radcliffe (Pooh-Bah). The kids had a school teacher on the set and Kingsley reported that “the children are well cared for during the making of pictures.”

The plot of The Mikado doesn’t seem like an obvious choice for a children’s film, with coerced marriages and the threats of execution, but Kingsley reassured readers that “this adroit Gilbert and Sullivan satire has been made into a picture play which rather emphasizes the refreshing comedy of the story than reflects any of its satiric vein.” Unfortunately we can’t see how they managed that, because it’s a lost film.

Chester Franklin

Sidney Franklin

Chester and Sidney Franklin got their start in film in 1915 when they independently wrote and directed a short, The Baby. It led to them being hired by Majestic Motion Picture Co. to make more comedy shorts starring kids. In 1917 they were hired by Fox to direct features with children. They made five, including Jack and the Beanstalk, which Kingsley had enjoyed a great deal. Despite their cheerful words about working with youngsters, Fan Fan was their last of their children’s features for Fox; they both moved on to separately direct adult actors.

Toll of the Sea (1922)

Random Harvest (1942)

Chester called the shots on over 50 films; his most famous was the 2-strip Technicolor Toll of the Sea (1922). Sidney had an even more successful career. He made films like The Hoodlum (1919) with Mary Pickford and Smilin’ Through (1922) with Norma Talmadge, then in 1926 he was hired by M.G.M. where he became Irving Thalberg’s protégé. He got to direct big-budget literary films like Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) and The Good Earth (1937). After Thalberg’s death he became a producer at the studio; he worked on Ninotchka (1939), Random Harvest (1942) and The Yearling (1946) among others.

Pickford as Unity Blake in Stella Maris

Stella and Unity

Kingsley visited another studio this week and reported that nobody could find Mary Pickford on the set of her latest film Stella Maris, but there was

a funny looking feminine creature in an old ragged dress, her hair ‘skinned’ back away from her face, and a big basket over her arm….By and by, over the face of the funny little girl spread a whimsical smile—Mary Pickford’s own particularly droll little grin.

“Don’t you think I’m brave to live with this face?” inquired Mary, strolling out of the scene as she waited for the property men to fix up the canvas light reflectors. “You know, my mother could safely leave me out all night any time in this make-up and nobody would steal me. Even with a string of pearls I don’t believe they’d touch me.” Marshall Neilan, her own director, couldn’t find her under her funny make-up the other day.

This wasn’t just hype: as you can see in the photos, her character did look radically different from Pickford, and it was very effective acting and make up. They kept the plot to the film secret from Kingsley, so she thought that Pickford was poor in the first two reels, then became pretty when her fortunes improved. Actually it was a dual role, with Pickford playing both the mistreated orphan servant Unity Blake and the paralyzed, wealthy Stella Maris. The film is available on DVD. Fritzi Kramer called it “one of the finest silent features of the 1910’s and is essential viewing for fans of the era;” you can read her full review at Movies Silently.

Holmes Herbert, Florence LaBadie

Kingsley’s favorite film this week was an adaptation of Edward Everett Hale’s short story The Man Without A Country. In 1863 Hale wrote it to promote enlistment in the Union Army during the Civil War. It told the fictional story of Phillip Nolan, who had been convicted of treason and was sentenced to exile on the sea, forbidden from hearing anything about the United States. In this version, the man is a pacifist “for no particular reason,” even after his Red Cross nurse sweetheart is presumed dead when her ship is torpedoed. He refuses to enlist until he’s given Hale’s story, then after he reads it he sees the error of his ways and joins the army. Kingsley felt it should be compulsory viewing for all pacifists.

Florence LaBadie

Her review ended on a melancholy note: the leading lady, Florence LaBadie had died on October 13, 1917 of septicemia after an automobile accident, and Kingsley felt in was uncanny to see her still alive on the screen, yet “it seems like a marvelous trick of fate that the last role she played in the films was one embodying such patriotic idealism as this one.” Movies were so young then that this was unusual. The film survives at the Library of Congress and a preview is on the Internet Archive. Cornell University has made the original short story available online.

Lasky stars do their bit for the war effort.

Kingsley’s best line this week was equally patriotic: a Liberty Loan film playing with Norma Talmadge’s disappointing The Moth was “of such a fascinating nature it would make you steal money to buy bonds.” This enthralling short comedy was called The Great Liberty Bond Hold-Up and it featured Mary Pickford, William S. Hart, Julian Eltinge, Douglas Fairbanks and Theodore Roberts. It was part of the series All-Star Production of Patriotic Episodes for the Second Liberty Loan. Be careful looking at the photo, you don’t know what crimes it might inspire you to commit!

One hundred years ago this week, Grace Kingsley had a chat with Charlie Chaplin about his future ambitions. He had no film to promote and was between jobs: he’d just finished his last film for Mutual and was about to leave for a vacation in Hawaii, after which he would start working for First National. They didn’t mention movies at all, and he seemed to be quite happy to talk about other subjects. He spoke about what he hoped to do in the future:

Chaplin’s big ambition, confided to me the other day, is nothing less than to write and produce a play on the stage. And about this business Charlie cherishes no illusions.

“I’m not nearly ready to do it yet,” he said. “I must work, study and write for at least another five years. In the meantime I must know people who will stimulate thought and imagination—clever people who have accomplished things. Yes, I should wish to write a comedy, of course, but a comedy with a deep and genuine human touch.”

So as early as 1917 he wanted to make Serious Art, but he didn’t imagine he could do that with film. Chaplin never did produce a play. He must have decided that film could be taken seriously enough for his ambitions. Five years later he began shooting A Woman of Paris, a drama about a woman who choses between security and love.

Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree

Tree as Macbeth

He went on to describe being tongue-tied when he met actor/theater manager/founder of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree: “I managed to yammer out something, but I’m sure it was quite ghastly.” Tree didn’t notice, he was too busy monologing on how he wanted to stage Macbeth, the history of non-Shakespeare Elizabethan playwrights and the benefits of travel for young people. Chaplin didn’t make his escape until Tree’s daughter Iris rescued him.

Oliver Twist asks for more, by George Cruikshank

He also talked about fiction, and told a sweet story about his favorite author, Dickens:

“I used to imitate Dickens’ characters at school, from the Cruikshank illustrations,” said Charlie, “and one day one of the directors gave me Oliver Twist. It was the first book I ever owned because my mother was too poor to buy us books, and it was the first story I ever read. I carried it home and put it under my pillow, falling asleep that night on my precious book, and I read and reread it until it was soiled and torn.”

Oliver Twist remained his favorite novel for his whole life; he continued to read it over and over, according to his biographer Stephen Weismann.*

Kingsley’s favorite film this week was Bondage, which starred Dorothy Phillips as a newspaper writer who marries a lawyer, quits work and promptly gets bored and allows

an old love affair with a worthless cad to obsess her. If the young woman had kept on the job of writing, there would have been no story. But she didn’t. The creative mind is subject to influence which less imaginative souls never feel, and this Miss Phillips has subtlety conveyed.

Kingsley thought it was “Ibsen-esque in its power and insight…a picture which should not be missed by lovers of good drama.” Plus (for a change!) she got to see a female reporter that seemed realistic to her. Bondage was written and directed by Ida May Park More from a story by Edna Kenton. You don’t suppose that if there were more women directing films now we would get more interesting and complicated female characters?

Her review of Douglas Fairbanks latest, The Man From Painted Post, did the box office no harm, and she got to write some of her funniest lines of the week:

Any old time Douglas Fairbanks can’t hold up and kill off, sometimes one at a pop, sometimes two at a pop, as many as a dozen ruffians, smiling as he does it, he feels his day has been wasted….Nay, more than that, he holds up one rascally poltroon in the dust with nothing more dangerous than the handle of a stewpot! Very subtle satire on the old melodrama stuff, this picture play.

Too naughty for New York!

An earlier Dorothy Phillips film was running into a little trouble with the censors:

The New York censors, despite experience which might be supposed to be toughening, still have delicate sensibilities; or, at any rate there are large sensitive spots on their sensibilities. The title of the Bluebird feature Hell Morgan’s Girl, contained too strong a wallop for these gentlemen, who have changed the name to A Soul’s Redemption, which, as [film co-star] Lon Chaney justly observed the other day, has about as much punch as “toothbrush.”